The Distillation

An infamous Arizona pharmaceutical company that spent a half million dollars fighting the state’s marijuana legalization efforts has... received approval from the DEA for its synthetic substitute for the natural plant...the only other product manufactured by Insys, Subsys, is an oral form of the powerful painkiller fentanyl. Fentanyl, in its various forms, is responsible for thousands of overdose deaths in the ongoing opioid abuse epidemic in the United States....In December 2016, former Insys CEO Michael Babich and six other Insys executives were arrested for allegedly bribing doctors to prescribe the drug and defrauding insurance providers as part of their aggressive promotion to push sales of Subsys. The case is still pending.

In 2016, Insys donated $500,000 to Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy, a group campaigning against Proposition 205, which would have legalized adult recreational use of marijuana in Arizona. The proposition failed to pass by a 52 percent-48 percent vote in last November’s election. During the campaign, the company said the measure wouldn’t “protect the safety of Arizona’s citizens.” Interestingly, Syndros has been determined by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to have a higher potential for abuse than Marinol. The DEA, in its announcement of the approval of Syndros, noted “HHS stated that the abuse potential of dronabinol oral solution is similar to that of other THC containing products such as concentrates, infused edibles and drinks.”

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In addition to our extensive lending library located in Eugene/Springfield, we aim to direct our community to the recent news related to ethnobotanicals and other plant-based/inspired derivatives. Please support the work of these journals, publishers, and writers in their attempts to translate the ethnobotanical phenomenon for a worldwide audience.